


The Dead Revolutionaries Club

by 1Boo



Series: The Dead Revolutionaries Club [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Friendship, Genderqueer Character, Inspired by Real Events, International Relations, Multi, Political Extremists, Politics, Slow Build, by which I mean International Lives of Crime, femjolras, no one becomes a lawyer, still way French though, which will sometimes be problematic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1474624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1Boo/pseuds/1Boo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire designs some posters for his flatmates's friends. Within six months he's sitting in a government building taken over by Ukrainian revolutionaries, trying to explain to Cosette's contact on a burner phone that really, Musichetta is just a war reporter with no extremist affiliations. Things continue in this pattern.</p><p>(In which Grenoble isn’t Paris, but they just can't help themselves.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Grantaire has a vision

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing in this 'verse while I was living in Grenoble, France. Most things that happen are stolen from daily life there, because I was just trying to deal with things through characters. Nothing fancy. You'll notice a lot of gender and race changes; that's less of a statement than it looks like. I was too sad an exhausted when I dreamed up this verse to make any statements. It's just the sorts of people I saw in my neighborhood.

 

Grantaire met Enjolras in the nighttime, after the buses all stopped and the D tram no longer made an effort to venture into the neighborhood called Saint Martin D’Heres. Grantaire gripped a bottle of gin in one hand, because he respected the late-night tradition of street-drinking in Grenoble, and a black marker in the other. When he’d left the apartment he’d thought of maybe doodling on a few shop windows or the plastic walls of bus station shelters, but he’d been out for hours now and had added nothing of his own, anywhere, to the shifting landscape of city graffiti. He was adrift; he had enough gin in his belly to pretend he didn’t exist. To draw something of his own would ruin his illusion, so he did not do that.

This was a Sunday, one week into a black mood. Even if Grantaire was still himself, tiny and weak in the center of it all, a black mood enveloped him, and would spit him out when it chose.

That was the way of things.

He stood in front of an apartment complex, considering this. The wall he faced was mostly bare, marked with only the favored tag line: a cursive sprawl of _Libre?_ It was inescapable. Free, free? All over the city, like birds chirping, a scrawl of it in every corner of your eye.

In the distance, there was the distant slap of heeled boots on asphalt.

Grantaire bent to follow the sound of footsteps without moving his own unsteady feet. He ended up twisted like a hunchback, and the angle spun his head pleasantly. He wanted to laugh and slide off the side of the world.

The woman in the boots came towards him along the well-lit curve of the tram tracks, which were set in the pavement parallel to the street. She did not know that Grantaire was along her path – along it but not in it, like a pebble kicked into the underbrush. She walked straight along smooth metal, the tracks that to her might have meant efficiency and city planning, and to Grantaire were urban ley lines and someone else’s ball of string in the labyrinth. Her pace was quick without hurrying. Grantaire stopped to watch her for a moment, leaning up against the mildewed paint that peeled off the side of the apartment complex under his fingers, surrounded by Free?, Free?, insistent ghosts on the walls over his shoulders.

As Grantaire watched a man and woman on bikes coasted along the tram tracks from the opposite direction, heading out of Saint Martin D’Heres and towards Grenoble city proper, where even from here Grantaire could see the Bastille lit up blue on the side of the mountain. The two bicyclists steered expertly out of the path of Enjolras’s boots, each with one hand on their handlebars and the other wrapped around the neck of a bottle of wine. They were water and the woman was the rock. Had someone clung to a rock in a storm and been sainted? Grantaire could not remember. Grantaire had chosen Saint Jeanne for his confirmation. This was not helpful.

He was very drunk. The world was a sliding haze of lights on a black background, and the stranger, with her steady course, was glorious.

Even if Enjolras didn’t bother to break stride as the bicyclists passed, her eyes still followed them instinctually. This was the only reason she noticed Grantaire, who she’d already walked by. Grantaire, who was standing with a marker in his hand in front of a graffitied wall.

Okay, so he could see how this might be misconstrued.

If he’d had any sense, he would have used the moment it took her eyes to adjust from the glare of the lit-up tram tracks to stick the goddamn marker in his pocket and pretend to be a harmless drunk pissing on the wall. No one decided further inspection was needed of a man pissing on a wall. Grantaire knew _some_ things.

But he wasn’t thinking – not a surprise, he thought ruefully – so she walked right up to him, met his gaze, and said, instead of whatever he was expecting, “You should come to one of our meetings.”

This didn’t really compute very fast. In part this was because, as she spoke, Grantaire’s brain was madly remembering everything he knew about fines and criminal records and Grenoble had notoriously liberal police, right? And maybe she’d feel better if she got to shout at him a little about taxpayers and how people like him are why university students had to pay fifteen euros for civil insurance. He could let her shout. Not a problem.

She didn’t shout. She grabbed his wrist, touching his sleeve but not his skin, and thrust a piece of paper in his hand. It was smooth, like a magazine page. Semi-gloss paper, something sluggish in the back of Grantaire’s mind reminded him. For when you want the vibrancy of glossy paper but the resistance to glare of matte.

He often got lost in details.

“Okay,” Grantaire said, because he was drunk and it was late and this woman’s hair was blonde and cut at her collarbone in wisps like razors. “Sure.”

He bowed, sloppy, and she flinched away. It was not a fearful flinch; it might’ve been a disgusted one. She hadn’t realized that he was drunk when she’d approached, he thought. He laughed.

“Are you alright?” she asked, as if she didn’t know the rules of what was best left alone. “Monsieur…?”

He realized, through the haze of gin, through the strangling hands of the black mood, that the nuance of her tone across the word monsieur had not been a continuation of her question, but an uncertainty; she wasn’t sure if it was the correct address. He looked down at himself, but his clothes were all male, unless you counted the lace-edged knee socks. The socks were not visible as he was wearing jeans. He was confused. He was oddly relieved.

But still drunk, and still himself, so he slurred out, “Am I alright? I’m lovely. I’m Icarus enjoying the view.”

And she withdrew.

Grantaire kept his eyes down as she left and tried to focus on the flyer still in his hand. He considered the possibility that he’d just been recruited for a cult. His wrist ached from the strength of her grip. He checked himself for his wallet with numb fingers, but found it easily enough. So that hadn’t just been an extraordinarily strange mugging.

The question remained, however: what the fuck? Grantaire stumbled a little more into the light, trying vaguely to see if there was going to be any bruising on his wrist, laughing at himself for tripping over his own feet.

Once under the streetlights, though, he realized he could still see her, still walking in long strides down the center of the tram tracks. Artemis, he thought, watching her walk so purposefully away from him. Athena, Freya. That nymph Apollo chased for rape, who turned herself into a tree.

Grantaire was an art history student at UPMF, but Mythology was his last class of the week. He picked up the gin, and threw the marker in a gutter.

 

 

On the way home he lost the bottle of gin somehow, but Grantaire woke safely tangled in his own duvet at seven AM with shaking hands, and smoked three cigarettes in quick succession, barefoot on his skinny balcony. The sun was rising over the rough peaks of the Belledonne. He watched it, tired. The entirety of him felt gritty and stinging.

The gin he found after only a quick wander of the neighborhood, on a park bench next to a late night kebab shop. Grantaire snatched it up quickly, dodging the looks sent his way from the lady behind the counter of the _boulangerie_ across the street. He was pretty sure he once woke up in front of that bakery with a local beggar glaring down at him, about two seconds away from going through Grantaire’s pockets. The owner, his erstwhile savior, obviously remembered him.

He snatched up the bottle and the crumpled pamphlet lying next to it, and got the hell away.

By the time he’d climbed the four flights up to their apartment, Feuilly was awake and nursing a cup of coffee with a look of deep reverence. She looked about as haggard as Grantaire felt, but Feuilly was decent and sane and would be quiet about it.

“Good morning!” Grantaire sang out in the best falsetto he could muster, because no one to date had ever accused Grantaire of being decent and sane and quiet, and there was really no point in breaking the trend now.

Feuilly didn’t kick him in the ankle – she wasn’t violent, but swift and inconspicuous kicks were a specialty of hers when she didn’t want to yell at him in public, or was too tired to deal with him – so she’d probably had enough coffee to put up with at least a little of his shit.

“Wasn’t expecting you at the door,” she said, frowning, her dark eyes tracking between Grantaire and closed door to his bedroom. His was the door marked with a large, glittery butterfly. Grantaire shrugged and held up the bottle of gin he’d been in the process of stuffing into his cabinet, the flyer half-crumpled behind it.

“Rescuing a fair maiden. Or gentlemaid. Gin’s a masculine noun*, but shouldn’t be beholden to gender constructs.”

Feuilly wasn’t looking at the gin, and didn’t comment on gender constructs. She had fished Grantaire’s various and often lacey underwear out of the washing machine more than once; that ship had sailed. She was staring instead at the flyer, which had fallen finally to the floor with Grantaire’s grand gestures. She had a strange expression, like maybe all the blood had drained from her face under her dark skin.

“Grantaire,” she said slowly, “where did you get that?”

He stared, trying to understand where the connection was here.

“Uh, a lady? Gave it to me? A bit blurry, really.” He stooped and picked up the flyer, noting the headrush as he straightened – and shit, was it anemia again? Or maybe just the hangover. Please let it be the hangover. Feuilly still looked blindsided, but the look on her face was suspiciously similar to recognition.

“Wait, are you involved in the…this…?” he trailed off. He hadn’t actually read the flyer.

“It’s a group. That I’m with, yeah.” She continued to stare like aliens had landed in their kitchen. “And which I wasn’t exactly going to mention.”

Grantaire shrugged. “Keeping things from me? Alas, I find I don’t give a shit, as you are a big girl now. But what exactly does your secret cult group…do? It’s not exactly clear on the flyer, is it?” he asked, peering down at the paper with a frown.

“As far as I can tell, you’re some very queer-friendly socialists.”

Feuilly sighed, massaging her temples. She got up and grabbed a yogurt cup out of the fridge. “This is actually important to me, Grantaire,” she said, licking the foil yogurt top. That was one of Feuilly’s little habits. She didn’t waste food, not ever. When Grantaire’s medication made him too nauseous to finish anything it made him feel particularly shitty.

“Okay, okay, just explain. Don’t explain the photoshopping, though. I don’t want to know.”

He received another withering look. “Who did you say gave this to you?”

“A blonde lady, I think.”

“You think she was blonde or you think she was a lady?” Feuilly asked, deadpan.

“Shut up. I think she was blonde. And had a…uh, a red coat. And looked serious as fuck and kind of…shiny. Intense.”

Apparently this was a sufficient description because Feuilly said, “Oh shit, you’ve actually _met_ Enjolras,” and nearly dropped her yogurt. If it wasn’t so funny Grantaire would be concerned.

“I have? I have,” he decided. “It was suitably dramatic. Would’ve been more so if she’d actually tried to have me arrested, like I was expecting. Do we have any cereal?”

“Arrested?” Feuilly demanded, her face doing something funny. “Oh, god, she didn’t get arrested, did she?”

“They would have only fined me, don’t fret.” He paused in his hunt for cereal as the rest of her words settled in his brain. “Does this lady get arrested _often_?”

“No, no, I am not talking to you about Enjolras. But what she gave you,” Feuilly muttered, neatly stealing the flyer from his hands and peering at it, speaking more to herself than to Grantaire, “is a flyer advertising The Dead Revolutionaries Club.” She paused, coming back to herself, and cracked a smile. “Oh, damn, I actually just used that name. Jean is rubbing off on me.”

“I’m really not sure which, of all these new revelations, I should address first,” Grantaire said, rubbing his face.

“Address nothing,” Feuilly ordered, brandishing her spoon and running her other hand through her fro with mock annoyance. “Stay out of it, oh my god.”

“No no no, how could I ever?” he asked, riffling through the cupboards. Looking up and stretching his arms over his head was doing funny things to his vision. The anemia theory was gaining ground. “Who is Jean? Have you been out wooing, Feuilly my darling, my morning star?”

“How are you this chipper with a hangover?” Feuilly attempted to deflect.

Grantaire’s smile became rather fixed. He wasn’t feeling chipper. He was trying so fucking hard, and she went and brought attention to it. For a second he was very angry at Feuilly and wanted to rip the coffee out of her hands and throw it against the wall; God he could imagine it, the sound it would make the stain, the grim and horrible satisfaction. Then that passed and he blinked and was tired.

Something of this must have showed on his face.

“ _Bon sang_ , R. Just drink some coffee and I’ll tell you about Jean’s slam sonnets.” Feuilly was gruff but deeply kind in the moments when people didn’t know how much they needed it.

“I’m cutting back on coffee. What’s a slam sonnet?”

“How should I know?” Feuilly asked, her smile a little self-deprecating.

“I’m well aware of your Wikipedia addiction,” Grantaire informed her. “Bossuet and I are scheduling the intervention for next Tuesday, if that works for you. Joly’s got an exam Monday, or we’d make it earlier.”

“Fine, I just haven’t had a chance to google it yet. And I can’t tell a sonnet from Mc Solaar lyrics, but I’ve heard he’s invented his own rhyme scheme and he’s got a boner for Keats. What do you mean, cutting back coffee?” She paused, obviously catching up, and asked overly casual, “You feeling sick?”

“Having a flare-up, I think,” Grantaire grunted, pouring himself some off-brand frosted flakes. There were three identical boxes of milk in the fridge, every one of their labels in Arabic. “Can you _please_ mark the skim when you buy it?” he whined over his shoulder in Feuilly’s direction.

“Learn another language; broaden your horizons.” Feuilly said drily, graciously letting him change the subject. “Speaking of language, Jean the lit student would probably go for you. I’ll happily sell you off to him if you’ll take your prattling elsewhere.”

“Tell me,” Grantaire said instead, “does Jean write odes to the famous Enjolras?”

Feuilly smiled slowly. Grantaire began to worry.

“Enjolras, huh?” Feuilly said. Grantaire shrugged, his own smile turned self-deprecating.

“If I were Donatello, I’d carve her in marble. Or maybe in bronze, like his _David_. The good _David_ , not his first one, that one is shitty.” And it was true, he would. She’d been a sculpture in the night, something solid when there had been nothing in Grantaire’s head but the image of black waves, black water.

“I wondered how long it would take you to bring up Enjolras again. It does make sense,” Feuilly said, tapping her chin.

“Okay, what the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked tiredly, “Cause I can tell you right now I don’t actually want to sleep with her. Or Jean, no offense to a guy I don’t even know.” His art rambling wasn’t anything new; Feuilly had seen him go into a daze for an afternoon after he’d pictured their postman as a Klimt painting. Yet, Feuilly sighed at him the way that made Grantaire feel loud and oblivious and bumbling.

“I’m not going to gossip with you,” she said, checking the time on her phone. It was a red Samsung with a strip of blue tape on it, because she and Grantaire had both bought the cheapest phones they could find and spent a month mixing them up before they gave in and marked them. “Instead, I’m off to work.” She gave him a steady look, but her mouth quirked. “If you can’t be good be careful.”

“Yes Maman,” he said, mouth still full of frosted cornflakes, standing to execute a crisp salute. She left, keys jangling, and Grantaire suddenly felt overwhelmed, even though he was alone in the apartment, even though Feuilly’s presence was nothing but quiet and steady and calming. He rushed to his room, slamming the door too hard without thinking and nearly knocked his glittery butterfly off its hook.

Grantaire meant to lie in his duvet nest and float away on the sick feeling; drift on the way exhaustion and a mouth still rank with the old scent of gin numbed his brain. And he did just that, for a while. The surprise came when he got up again.

It was only noon, and the sun was high over the valley. The white rock that showed through on sheer cliff faces on the distantly high peaks of the Belledonne surged hot and bright against the brown of the rest of the mountain. There were pockets of snow, too, growing like mold in the pits and shadows of the highest peaks.

He stumbled into the kitchen, barefoot on brown tile neither cool nor warm. He ate more cereal. He picked up the flyer to throw it in the bin, but got caught up trying to make sense of the design choices. It was a work of art in its own way, if by ‘its own way’ you meant it had matched the aesthetics of a nicely shaped dog shit.

Grantaire doodled DEAD REVOLUTIONARIES CLUB with a silver sharpie over the copy-paste google images and what had possibly once been the tricolor. After some consideration, he added some sparkles and a doodle of Che Guevara. Went back to his room to find body glitter as an addition, but gave up after a cursory search of his bedside table and returned to the kitchen with his phone instead. He forgot that he’d been considering pulling out a bottle of wine and going on a proper bender.

He forgot not to be curious.

 **R (11:53):** this flyer rlly is shitty. but it mentions meeting. whr is meeting?  
 **Feuilly (12:02):** ur face is shitty. dont try to sculpt enjolras.  
 **R (12:02):** no promises  
 **Feuilly (12:04):** it’s a café across from the Casino on the way to parc paul mistral  
 **Feuilly (12:04):** nxt to boucherie on Rue Jeanne d’Arc  
 **Feuilly (12:05):** ur not even a sculptor  
 **R (12:24):** u dont no me u dont no my life  
                [image attached]

And that was how Grantaire spent the next half hour cleaning up scattered paintbrushes and the broken remnants of his only remaining wine glass after “Self Portrait with Stolen Roses” self-destructed, vacuumed the entire apartment, and still made it to a grotty little café on Rue Jeanne d’Arc in time to see Feuilly disappear up a staircase to an upper room, where loud voices greeted her by name.

  


	2. In which Courfeyrac orders a pizza

“Were you listening when I said these meetings are important to me?” Feuilly asked with a sigh as she and Grantaire stepped out of the grocery store tucked in the ground floor of grimy apartment blocks, shooting a worried look at the gaggle of students across the street. Grantaire waved jovially at them, and got a few grins in return.

“Um. Yes?” he said.

Feuilly rolled her eyes. “Here are your peas,” she said. Grantaire took the bag of frozen store-brand peas and put it gingerly to the bruise spreading across his jaw. “You going to be alright?”

“Hell yeah,” said Grantaire, and if he slurred it a little bit, that was mostly thanks to pressing a bag of fucking frozen peas against his face. He was pretty sure his jaw was still where it was supposed to be. “I haven’t felt this good in weeks.”

He was grinning, he realized. It was probably starting to look strange.

“That’s just the adrenaline, R,” Joly said miserably, following Feuilly and Grantaire out of the grocery store. “Here, you forgot your change.” Grantaire obligingly took the coins with his free hand, but the grin still wouldn’t die.

“And you!” he said to Joly. “All my friends are traitors – Feuilly didn’t tell me you were involved in this. Hell, _you_ didn’t tell me you’re involved in this. What gives?”

Joly smiled wanly. “Involved in what, the dead revolutionaries club? I didn’t think it’d be your thing.” He grinned slyly, a little more like his usual self. “You’re not very interested in meetings.”

Grantaire laughed. “That was one time, and all I did was flip a table and walk out.”

“What?” asked Feuilly. They began to walk down the street in the direction of Grantaire and Feuilly’s apartment, Joly tagging along and looking slightly more cheerful.

“It’s a beautiful story,” said Joly, slinging an arm around Grantaire’s shoulders. Grantaire laughed and tried to match his stride, but they still weaved a bit along the sidewalk. “We met at a health-based anxiety support group. I’d been going for weeks and it was horrible; Grantaire lasted what? Ten minutes—oh don’t make that face, R, it was at least ten—before he flipped a table and walked out. I followed because I just _had_ to thank him. I’d been wanting to do just that for weeks.”

“We went home together and got high on Joly’s flatmate’s weed. Start of a beautiful friendship,” interjected Grantaire around his face of frozen peas.

Feuilly laughed. “And to think, when I met Grantaire I thought he was normal.”

“I resent that,” Grantaire muttered, fumbling for his phone with the arm not currently slung around Joly and holding a sack of frozen peas. He looked at the screen and grinned.

“Who’s that?” asked Feuilly.

“Bahorel,” said Grantaire.

Feuilly and Joly both stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Grantaire stopped too, and looked blankly at them.

“R,” said Joly slowly, “Five minutes ago Bahorel punched you in the face.”

“Yes,” said Grantaire, “but we’re cool now. Some people don’t learn until they get hurt, after all,” he added, with an exaggerated gesture at his bruised jaw.

“Do you mean you’ve changed your mind about what you were spouting back there?” asked Feuilly carefully, arching one eyebrow. Joly outright snorted, falling into step behind them. Grantaire sighed.

“Feuilly, I didn’t believe a word I was saying.” Grantaire laughed shortly around his bag of peas. “Nor do I really agree with Bahorel.”

“But he was right,” said Feuilly in her even, friendly voice. Just because she said it nicely didn’t mean she was about to back down. Grantaire saw Joly’s face flicker, and was pretty sure he was wondering if Feuilly was going to punch Grantaire too. It was hard to imagine Feuilly punching anyone, but Grantaire had a talent for aggravation.

“Next time,” said Joly, apparently ready to do some damage control, “maybe stay away from subjects that’ll force Bahorel to do his best to give you a nasal fracture.” Joly then nearly tripped Grantaire up by walking half in front of him, peering at his swollen jaw.

“I dodged,” Grantaire said. “And in my defense Bahorel doesn’t look the type to go ragebeast over homophobic Italian pasta companies.”

Joly smiled crookedly, even while Feuilly remained unimpressed. “Bahorel isn’t shy about throwing punches if he sees an insult to one of his friends,” he said.

“I like him. Straightforward.”

Joly laughed. “Straightforward into your face.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes, and turned to Feuilly who walked beside them, not quite angry but still tense, her arms crossed and her hands gripping her opposite elbows.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he told her. She let out a huge sigh. “I’ll cook us tapas?” he tried, hopefully.

“Okay, R, okay. Listen, I came straight from work and I was running late, so I parked my car just up there.” She pointed, and Grantaire recognized her junky, ducktaped, but undeniably clean and well-loved little car parked inconspicuously in front of a Thai restaurant neither of them could afford.

“I’m fine walking,” Grantaire said. “You parked like, three minutes from home.”

She nodded and jogged over to her car. Joly and Grantaire continued their slow amble along the sidewalk, under the dappled light from the trees that lined the road, half-listening to the background cascade of radio talk-shows and shouting children and women bickering through cigarettes as they hung up the laundry on cement block balconies in the apartments high above the street.

“I live in the other direction, you know,” said Joly presently, but he didn’t seem particularly irritated.

“Just one more thing, Joly, and then you too can be free of my presence for a few precious hours at least,” said Grantaire, shifting the peas against his chin. His hand had gone red and numb, but fortunately so had his face.

“Sure,” said Joly. “Did you know, the way your face is swollen in a way that looks kind of odd.”

“My face is kind of odd all on its own,” deflected Grantaire. “Listen, I just wanted to know: this dead revolutionaries club…”

“I can’t tell you why it’s called that!” Joly exclaimed. “You haven’t been initiated.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “Not my question. I want to know, is it just you, or is Laigle doing this too?”

Joly was silent for a moment. They climbed over bits of pavement heaved up by tree roots and passed an eyeglass shop – whose business name was a terrible pun, Grantaire would have to remember that one – before he spoke.

“We really didn’t think you’d want to be involved, R,” Joly said finally.

“I’m not mad,” said Grantaire. He wasn’t. “You know me, I’m neutral on the whole thing. You could have mentioned it, though. I’m starting to feel like my friends are all wrapped up in a conspiracy.”

Joly laughed and wrapped a gawky arm around Grantaire’s shoulders.

“I’ll try not to keep you in the dark.”

 

Later that week Grantaire decided to take advantage of the good mood he was in and go to the market for Feuilly. She’d bought all the food in the last month, Grantaire thought. He wasn’t sure. September was kind of a blur.

He popped two over-the-counter painkillers and a swallow of vodka, because he could feel the tiniest twinge in the joints of his ankles. He didn’t need to be halfway home and have the pain flare up in his knees and back and hips and knuckles. Grantaire didn’t like to go for walks without painkillers; the thought made his stomach roll.

But today he felt okay. He typed out a quick, **Grocery run, what u want food-wise?** And sent it to his most recent contact before he realized the last person he’d texted wasn’t Feuilly, like it normally was, or even Joly or Laigle.

Courfeyrac, one of the guys from the café, had wanted to know how his face was.

 **Courfeyrac (13:03):** Grantaire, darling, I’m flattered! Do you buy groceries for every new friend you make? Am I part of a tradition? BUT SRSLY I WILL PAY U IF U BRING PIZZA

 **R (13:04):** Just 4 u baby

 **R (13:04):** my bad, meant to txt Feuilly. Don’t have a schedule tho, if u rlly wanted that pizza? Am going to Casino Géant. Take payment in € or beer.

 **Courfeyrac (13:05):** bless u and all ur livestock. we have nothing in the apartment this morning except coffee, a snickers bar, and a thirst for justice.

 **Courfeyrac (13:08):** speaking of a thirst for justice, bring ur sketchbook?

“Okay,” said Grantaire, having reached his limit of comprehension. There was a knock on his door. Because, of course, Feuilly wasn’t even out, he could have just shouted and saved himself from Courfeyrac’s thirst for justice.

He grunted, and Feuilly took this as her invitation.

“Hey,” she said, “I’m just going to run to the shop, do you—“

“Nah, don’t bother, I’m going,” Grantaire said, still squinting at his phone. “I have to pick up a pizza for Courfeyrac. I think.”

“Okay,” said Feuilly. She looked happy that he was offering to do the groceries, though. She hadn’t been mad with him after the stunt with Bahorel, but she’d been a bit quiet. She had probably been trying to decide if Grantaire was self-sabotaging or actually making an attempt at human interaction.

“I texted him by accident,” Grantaire tried to explain. Feuilly pursed her lips and ran a hand through her short fro.

“Just watch yourself,” she said finally, her tone dry but oddly conspiratorial. “He’s as bad as Enjolras when it comes to recruiting.” Grantaire studied the slightly awkward look on her face that the bemused smile didn’t quite cover.

“Aw shit,” he said, “he’s that type of guy that picks up strays, isn’t he?”

Feuilly laughed. “I guess he is,” she said. “Don’t worry, R, he’ll realize soon enough that you’re not some pet left out in the rain.”

Grantaire smiled. “He tried it with you too, huh?”

“Which is why I know he’ll back off with the unsubtle rescue attempts once he gets to know you.”

Grantaire laughed.

“Feuilly, you’re a dear, but I am society’s poster boy for someone who needs a rescue attempt,” Grantaire said, but he was still pulling on a t-shirt and stuffing his keys and wallet in his pockets.

Her smile turned crooked, the way it did when she was having one of her private jokes that she was normally too polite to share. “I wouldn’t worry,” she repeated, “Courfeyrac’s not a huge fan of society.”

At the time, Grantaire had laughed and said, “Well, now I have to buy him a pizza,” and Feuilly had left it at that. Most university students were a little bit anarchist, anyhow.

It was an unseasonably warm autumn for Grenoble in particular, France in general. Normally by the middle weeks of October the valley was a cup of clouds and snow softened the edges of the mountains. Today though, it was sunny and merely cool. Grantaire was beginning to regret his tracksuit hoody by the time he rang the buzzer on the apartment Courfeyrac had specified, one of the tall apartment blocks near Chavant, overlooking movie theaters to one side and the edge of Parc Paul Mistral to the other, a knot of tram tracks at its feet.

“My savoir!” a voice chirped through the intercom, and the door buzzed. Grantaire yanked it open quickly, balancing the pizza box on his hip. He nearly cried with relief when he saw the clean lobby and what looked like some perfectly functional elevator doors to his left. The four flights of stairs up to his and Feuilly’s apartment were quite enough. Grantaire really didn’t need to experience ten.

Courfeyrac nearly made him brain himself against the elevator wall, standing at the landing with a grin on his face, right in front of the elevator doors as they slid open.

“Hello again!” he said, stealing the pizza from Grantaire’s hands and stuffing a wad of bills in Grantaire’s back pocket. They were blue, and at first Grantaire thought they must be blue-green five euro notes, but he wasn’t so sure. They had looked suspiciously like twenties.

“Damn,” said Grantaire, “Two minutes into our first date and you’re grabbing my ass. Is this how you treat all the girls?”

“Alas, I am working, but remind me someday to show you a real first date in action. My first dates rock worlds,” Courfeyrac said, waving a hand like a lazy raja and walking away. Helplessly, Grantaire trailed after Courfeyrac down the hall to a door that had been left ajar. What sounded like experimental and very angry German rock was coming from inside.

“Sorry,” Courfeyrac said, making a vague gesture towards the source of the music as he pushed the door open, “that’s Marius’s.”

The Marius in question looked up from a couch in the room they’d stepped into, a living room with a balcony and a wide view of the city and the mountains. A kitchenette was off to the right and appeared to be mostly covered in dirty dishes, two laptops, and warring tribes of manila envelopes and novelty coffee mugs. Marius, his own laptop on his lap, pressed a few keys and the German roar dulled a little.

“Hi,” Marius said, sticking out a hand towards Grantaire, “nice to meet you.” He had wide, deep-set eyes fringed with dark lashes. He also had a face that was just asking to be messed with, so instead of accepting the hand Grantaire swooped down and expertly kissed both his cheeks like a girl would do. Marius moved automatically to return the gesture, and then awkwardly began to apologize.

“Marius,” he finally croaked out in introduction. Grantaire laughed. “R,” he said. Courfeyrac was laughing in the background, where he was on a mad one-handed search of the kitchen drawers for something with which to cut the pizza.

“So, Grantaire,” said Courfeyrac, once he’d uncovered a pair of scissors and settled down on the floor next to the balcony doors. Grantaire had thought his fourth-floor view of the eastern Belledonne mountains was good; Courfeyrac had glass doors overlooking the northwest side of town, from the bastille halfway up the Chartreuse to the hulking Vercours topped with ski slopes, the train station flanked by two rivers nestled in between. Inside the flat, the coffee table like the kitchen was covered in a mess, but this one seemed to be Marius’s. It consisted mostly of dictionaries and enough paper to populate a small forest.

“Mm?” asked Grantaire.

“Did you bring your sketchbook?” Grantaire had, but---

“How did you know I _have_ a sketchbook?” he asked.

“Laigle may have mentioned it. Or maybe it was Joly.”

“Good to see at least Feuilly has a sense of self-preservation,” Grantaire said, because that was two of his three closest friends exposed as traitors.

“Feuilly has hidden depths,” Courfeyrac said, which was a pretty apt summary of Feuilly, and Grantaire wondered if maybe he should have paid more attention to Feuilly when she was describing Courfeyrac. “Once he gets to know you”, she’d said. Most people didn’t get a good read on Feuilly for a long time; Grantaire was still discovering things. The dead revolutionaries club, for one. He tried to remember what else she’d said about Courfeyrac, aside from collecting strays, but came up short.

“Anyway,” said Courfeyrac, plopping down on the floor with the pizza, “remember what you were saying at the last meeting, about our pamphlets?”

“Er,” said Grantaire, “Do you mean when I said it was the most aesthetically unpleasing and entirely useless piece of paper I’d seen since first year design class? And then…the rant about the pointlessness of human aesthetic?”

“Yes, that, exactly,” said Courfeyrac cheerfully from behind a piece of pizza. “Maybe don’t insult the group again, that would be nice? But you got me thinking on the pamphlet design.”

“Oh,” said Marius suddenly from the couch, “are you part of The Thing, then?”

“The Thing?” Grantaire asked, but Marius had turned to Courfeyrac.

“Should I make myself scarce?” he asked politely. Grantaire boggled; he’d assumed that Marius lived here. What kind of crazy shit was he expecting to go down that he’d banish himself from his own living room, anyway?

“No, no,” said Courfeyrac, “sit down, have some pizza, stop trying to come up with a million different ways to translate [Vergangenheitsbewältigung](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergangenheitsbew%C3%A4ltigung). Grantaire’s just helping me with flyers for now.”

That “for now” sounded pretty fucking foreboding to Grantaire.

“You’re not part of The Thing?” Grantaire asked Marius, just to be sure. He was beginning to see why Feuilly had used the joke name dead revolutionaries club, if that was in fact what Marius meant. It felt dumb to say “the thing” with a significant eyebrow movement, the way Marius was doing.

“Marius is just my silly flatmate,” Courfeyrac said, a little sharper and more protective than Grantaire was expecting.

“Okay,” Grantaire said, spreading his hands in an attempt to broadcast his neutrality. Grantaire was very neutral. He could do this.

“So, Laigle mentioned you take commissions,” Courfeyrac said. It should have felt like a forced subject change, but he said it so easily and handed Grantaire a piece of pizza at the same time so that Grantaire barely noticed.

“I used to take commissions,” Grantaire corrected. He hadn’t drawn anything in six months, not a fucking doodle, except for the joking bubble letters he’d used to write DEAD REVOLUTIONARIES CLUB on the offending pamphlet, and the little doodle of Che Guevara. All of that suddenly felt awkward to admit.

Courfeyrac raised an eyebrow and caught his eyes. Grantaire had a vague suspicion this was calculated. Courfeyrac’s eyes were hazel, striking in his dark, vaguely middle-eastern face.

“So you won’t, then?” Courfeyrac asked, and while Courfeyrac had nothing of the raw attracting force of Enjolras walking alone down the tram tracks in Saint Martin D’Heres, Grantaire realized with resignation that he was going to do it anyway.

Mostly because he wasn’t dumb enough to turn down work, but whatever.

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “My possibly useless aesthetics can be at your command for but a tiny fee.”

Courfeyrac laughed, and even Marius cracked a distracted smile on the couch.

With an exaggerated regal air and ridiculous elongation of his syllables, Courfeyrac drawled, “May I peruse your portfolio _monsieur l’artist_? And maybe after we can retreat to the parlor and discuss nihilism and _la bohème galante_ in third wave romanticism.”

“But good sir!” Grantaire exclaimed, a hand to his chest, because he couldn’t help himself when it came to spewing academic trivia with a good helping of bullshit; he could not be one-upped. “ _La groupe de la Bohème galante_ was a literary society composed only of Nerval and Gautier, and thus holds little standing in the world of visual arts, where both your pamphlet and my work sadly reside. It was not the members of the _Petit Cénacle_ who are remembered – or Lamartine _shouldn’t_ be – but the _Premiere Cénacle_ who opposed Gautier’s bohemian vision of the uselessness of art; they’re the ones kiddies are forced to choke down in school – de Musset and Vigny, Sainte-Beuve and…the other one, I’ve forgotten the other one. In any case, your argument is invalid and alas you must view my sketches here, and not in your assuredly lovely parlor.” He bowed with a flourish and handed over the sketchbook.

“Oh my fucking god,” said Courfeyrac, gaping, sketchbook dangling from one hand. “I was just quoting shit I’d heard Jean say.”

“I am a linguist,” said Marius from the couch. “As such I am very offended by the literature levels and must ask you both to leave.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, slowly, Marius toppled over sideways, giggling madly. Courfeyrac guffawed, at least half at Marius’s expense – a grown man his face mushed against pages of half-translated German postmodern poetry, laughing so hard he was drooling on his work. Grantaire settled down on the carpet and helped himself to a slice of pizza, like the opportunist freeloader he was.

“Oh my god, that was beautiful. Like being hit over the head with obscure academia. How do you know this shit?” Courfeyrac asked from the floor, where he hadn’t bothered to move after he’d finished laughing at Marius. Marius, on the couch, was bright red and trying to wipe up drool with the edge of his shirt.

“I was mostly bullshitting,” Grantaire said with a winning grin. Courfeyrac cracked open the sketchbook and made a little ‘hmm’ of approval. Grantaire wasn’t really sure which sketchbook he’d grabbed.

“There’s not gonna be much graphic design stuff in there,” Grantaire pointed out. “You said sketchbook, not sample of like, stationary design and advertising shit.”

“Can you do it though?” Courfeyrac asked, flipping pages. Grantaire tried to hold back a wince as is eyes tracked across god knew what.

“Uh, yeah,” said Grantaire. “I mean, I haven’t fucked around with InDesign in ages, but honestly this is more like a five minute photoshop gig – fonts and a simple color scheme, that sorta thing.

“Sounds like a yes,” Courfeyrac said, grinning. “Brilliant, here—“ he broke off to push himself off the floor and hurry into the kitchen, expertly sorting through the disaster zone around the sink, returning with a single sheet of paper. “I’ve typed up some basic parameters: what we want on there, word and image-wise. Color scheme, aesthetic shit, that’s up to you. Is that…okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Grantaire said, because no matter what was on the sheet of paper – and it was fairly normal once he saw it – it couldn’t be as bad as what he’d dealt with from some clients. For instance, no one was asking him to draw Jesus Christ as one of those aliens from Star Wars with fleshy tails on either side of their faces. He was about to tell Courfeyrac this, in part to see if he could actually get Marius to wet himself, when the front door of the apartment was flung open.

“Courfeyrac!” Enjolras called out, storming into the apartment, an ipad clutched in one hand and a cell phone in the other. “We’ve got a situation with Marseille, Combeferre’s on his way to the station now and I’ll follow him in six hours if it hasn’t been resolved by—oh, hello.”

She stopped short in the doorway to the living room. Courfeyrac, still splayed on the floor with his chin propped in his hands, had lost all his loose-limbed ease. It was a shock to see the look on his face, serious with an edge of panic, when a moment ago he’d been laughing.

Enjolras’s eyes tracked between Marius and Grantaire, and stayed on Grantaire. Marius, though, was the one who took the cue.

“You’ve finished with the pamphlet thing, right? Come on, I’ll walk you home and leave them to Their Thing,” Marius said. Grantaire realized that Enjolras and Courfeyrac weren’t going to continue their conversation until they were alone.

“Sure,” Grantaire said, watching the way Enjolras stood in the center of the room, entire stance tense like she was ready for a fight but politely waiting for them to leave. She did not look afraid like Courfeyrac had looked afraid for a split second. Every line of her was sure and steady and maybe a little annoyed.

Grantaire nodded to Marius and walked carefully around Enjolras. He didn’t mind the company, he figured, so long as Marius didn’t mind if he smoked.

“Thanks for coming by, Grantaire, come to the next meeting, it’s on Monday!” Courfeyrac shouted after him as they crossed the threshold.

“Why were they—“ Grantaire heard Enjolras murmur, before Marius closed the door behind them.

“Damn, I need a smoke,” said Marius in the elevator. Grantaire laughed and accepted one of Marius’s Lucky Strikes and idly thought of polite excuses he could make to deliver the pamphlets without actually having to show up to the Monday meeting.

It was dark once he said goodbye to Marius and pointed him back the way they’d come. Feuilly was cooking couscous in the kitchen with the frozen peas Grantaire had donated to the kitchen once they’d outlived their use as an ice pack. She had the windows open to the mild evening, and the bright lights were on over the football pitch attached to the school across the street opposite their kitchen window. She hummed along to a foreign radio station she streamed on her laptop, over the excited shouts occasionally wafting up from the football players and the little crowd of parents. It was nice. In his room he opened the windows on his tiny balcony all the way, to let in the unseasonably warm October air. He’d just added a particularly unlikely embellishment to his excuses to avoid the dead revolutionaries club’s café when he heard the first of three loud cracks.

Grantaire thought, ah, fireworks.

Grantaire stepped onto the balcony, fumbling for his lighter and craning his neck vaguely at the sky, trying to recall just what sort of holiday it would be. What caught his eye instead was an orange flicker through the row of elm trees at the back of the apartments. He squinted, trying to get his cigarette to light.

“Fireworks?” Feuilly called hopefully from the kitchen.

“Not quite,” said Grantaire. Through the gently swaying leaves another small explosion echoed off the apartment block. Smoke began to billow upwards, and neighbors began to peek out onto their balconies. Grantaire sighed. A car alarm began to blare. He bet Marius and Courfeyrac didn’t have this sort of thing happen in their neighborhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bahorel punched R for suggesting the Barilla pasta company which refused to have gay couples in its adverts was merely catering to its Italian audience, who're generally more conservative, and that punishing the company was ineffective in treating the cultural problem. He was just going on to say that the other companies jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon were only doing it for capitalist gain when Bahorel decided he was unneccesarilly ridiculing Bahorel's friends and went for a broken nose. R did manage to dodge, and much to everyone's confusion they then exchanged phone numbers and are now friends for life. 
> 
> Feuilly meanwhile is 100% done.


End file.
